Fortune Teller
by Mynuet
Summary: A look at Gourry's growing up. Ever wonder about that fortune teller he mentions in the series?


Gourry sat quietly, munching on an apple as he watched Miranda talk to her customer. Miranda was a massive woman, with skin as brown as a coffee bean and a multitude of scarves draped around her neck and shoulders, some dangling all the way past where her skirt ended below her knees. He liked sitting in Miranda's shop. She always had all sorts of neat stuff that gave a rare perfume to the air, and if he messed something up, she just yelled at him before helping him clean it up. Not like at home, where no one showed if they were angry or happy or sad.  
  
The lady Miranda had been talking to got up to leave. Miranda nodded her head to acknowledge both the lady's curtsey and her payment, accepting both as her due. The lady backed out of the room, bumping into a string of dried chicken feet dangling from the ceiling. Even this didn't take the happy expression from her face, and Gourry saw her break into a run as soon as she was outside.  
  
"Boy, you come here, give old Miranda her hug." Gourry happily complied, wrapping his arms around her as far as he could reach and squeezing tight. There hadn't been many hugs for him at home since his grandmother had died. He felt really lucky to have found someone who needed hugs as much as Miranda did. Too bad he wasn't going to get any more hugs after today.  
  
Miranda wiped a tear from his face. "What's wrong with my doll baby? Why you cry when Miranda here?"  
  
He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. After all, he was seven years old, and grown up boys of seven weren't supposed to cry. His father had said so. "I can't see you anymore, Miranda. The Baron said so." And what his father said was law, including that he was only to be referred to as the Baron.  
  
"Is that so?" Miranda's eyebrows shot up. She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him slightly away so that she could look into his face. "Do you want to stop coming to my shop, boy?"  
  
"No, Miranda, but fath- the baron said that you were a..." Gourry paused to think, his face screwed up in concentration. "Purr vicious in flew yence not fit to feed the dogs." Gourry blinked and looked at Miranda, whose normally brown face was glowing scarlet. "Why did he say you can't feed dogs? You take care of Mister Kibbles just fine." Mister Kibbles, the resident cat (named by Gourry), was trying to slink out and praying to the entire pantheon of feline gods that he would be out of range when his mistress exploded.  
  
"Oh, he say all that, did he?" Miranda rose from her chair majestically, upsetting the small table and sending the tea cup on it plummeting to the ground. Gourry caught it and placed it carefully in the small sink where the teapot already rested. Miranda watched and her round face fell back into its customary friendliness, except her eyes gleamed a little too brightly. "Your daddy, he make a mistake. We go and we fix it now."  
  
The fortune teller sailed out the door with her head high, Gourry's hand closed in hers. All around them, traffic stopped, even the horses were wild-eyed in the effort to get out of their path. Shutters crashed open and curtains twitched as the townspeople looked out to see what the commotion was. As soon as they saw the two figures charging down the street towards the big manor house, the curtains were quickly dropped and the shutters closed and bolted, and the house occupants looked for shelter. It had been twenty years since Miranda had moved into the old house with a small shop on the first floor, and since that day, no one had seen her set foot outside her property lines. No one knew what had made her leave it today, but they knew enough about Miranda to know that the set of her shoulders meant someone was going to regret it very much.  
  
Gourry stumbled as Miranda came to an abrupt halt in front of the imposing front door of Gabriev Manor. She looked around, taking in marble columns that looked as smooth and polished as glass, perfectly regimented shrubs and twelve foot high doors inlaid with exotic woods. "What's the fancy writing say up on top of those columns?"  
  
"That's the Gabriev family motto. It says 'The power of light is ours.'" Gourry looked at her blankly, wondering what would happen next.  
  
Miranda sneered. "Your daddy, he needs—" she broke off, looking down at his wide blue eyes. "Never mind what he needs. Why no one open the door for you? Fancy pants Jenkins run off with a girl or something?"  
  
"The Baron said I was supposed to come in through the servant's entrance until I learned the proper-"  
  
Miranda cut him off with a snort, gesturing towards the doors. They flew open, banging into the wall behind them hard enough to dent the plaster. Miranda took a few steps in, then stopped to examine a tremendously large tapestry which depicted a man with a halo and a glowing sword defeating a horde of monsters single handedly. Gourry was still close on her heels, a tiny blonde satellite hovering in her orbit. She looked down at him, then up at the tapestry again. "Your daddy tell you what that is?"  
  
Gourry nodded. "I forgot, though." Miranda grunted and started walking again. Gourry thought of a great idea and said, "Hey, you want to see my room? I can show you the special rock I found!"  
  
Before Miranda could answer, their path was blocked by a cadaverous figure in pin striped pants and a black tailcoat, white stockings and a cravat. "Master Gourry, the Baron will be most displeased with you."  
  
Miranda gave the newcomer a stern look. "Fancy Pants Jenkins, you going to be the one to stop old Miranda?"  
  
Jenkins was a loyal and courageous man. When a group of drunken bandits had stormed the manor, Jenkins had turned them away at the door. The few salesmen who dared attempt to challenge his authority had left the manor limping after having their feet crushed by the slamming door. In his entire tenure as butler to the Gabriev family, no one had entered the massive doors uninvited. Now he looked deep into the old woman's eyes and all that came out of his mouth was "no ma'am".  
  
Miranda nodded and kept walking until, with a wave of her hand, the door to the Baron's study flew open. The Baron looked up, his face reddening as he took stock in who had dared to interrupt him. Miranda took a moment to look him over. The Baron had been very handsome one, and a lot of people would say he still was. A lot of people would see the still-broad shoulders, the golden hair and clear blue eyes and think the Baron was the very image of what a dashing legendary hero should look like. Miranda was not just anyone, however, and she could trace the lines of dissipation that were starting to form, and she could see that the hair dye the Baron was using would shortly cause all of his hair to fall out. She couldn't stifle a small laugh. "So this the great Swordsman of Light, eh? I seen better."  
  
The Baron's face turned purple. "How dare you? Leave my house at once!" his eye fell on Miranda's silent shadow. "Gourry, you have disobeyed. Go upstairs and prepare for your punishment."  
  
Gourry hesitated, looking from his father to Miranda. He didn't want to make his father angrier, but he didn't think it would be right to leave Miranda unprotected. Miranda turned and made a sweeping gesture with her hands. "You heard your Daddy. You go upstairs while we talk and then I see you before I go home. Now, shoo."  
  
"Woman, how dare you speak that way to my son? If you're not gone within the next minute I'll have you thrown to the dogs." Gourry slipped out of the room, sad that he had made his father yell at Miranda. He wondered if she really would be able to talk the Baron into saying Gourry could keep visiting her shop. Probably not, he thought glumly as he climbed the stairs.  
  
Miranda waited until she head Gourry's feet on the stairs before turning to the furious lord in front of her. "Time we be introduced proper like, Mister Baron man. I be Miranda, Duchess of Mindor and owner of this here land."  
  
The Baron's mouth dropped open at the peasant's audacity. "You can't possibly be the duchess. Nobody's heard from her in years, and she was a noted sage, not some barely literate fortune teller."  
  
Miranda gave a short laugh and rooted amongst the many scarves at her capacious bosom until she drew forth a chain with a ring dangling from it. "This here's my seal, given me by the old king for what I done for him. Might be a barely lit'rat fortune teller. Doesn't change that I's your liege lord." Miranda smirked as the Baron sank into his chair, staring at the seal as a mouse stares at a cobra. "While we talk about that, maybe it be a good time to ask where the rents and taxes you s'posed collect for me... Except I see they paid for fine big house and stupid vain tapestries. So now we talk. Miranda talk, you listen."  
  
The Baron looked shell shocked as the old woman continued. "Your mama, she was a fine lady. Your daddy not bad most times. You always rotten, even when tiny. The evil sword just make you worse."  
  
"How DARE you?! You come in here with wild claims, a seal that's probably stolen, and you have the unimaginable gall to impugn the Swordsman of Light?" The Baron's arrogance had returned and he stood, his chair flying backwards as he drew his sword. "Light come forth." He called and the sword answered.  
  
Miranda noted clinically that the sword cast shadows that made the enraged man look older. She stood her ground as he slashed wildly, destroying his desk as he walked towards her. "You know who I am."  
  
The Baron stopped, holding the glowing blade in front of her expressionless face. "Give me one good reason not to kill you where you stand."  
  
Her eyes bored into his, triggering long forgotten memories of earliest childhood, when a young version of this woman had gazed at him with the same contempt. "You ain't ready for cold blooded murder yet, leastwise not when you know you'll get caught."  
  
"I am the lord of this land. The lives of my subordinates are mine to dispense as I choose." For all his bravado, his nerve and his blade of light were flickering. He remembered... She had been at court, and he had seen her dancing with the emperor from his hiding place on the stairs.  
  
She laughed. The sword flickered one last time before the light died. The Baron was too wrapped in his thoughts to respond until she said, "You only lord of what I let you be. You a thief, and a bully, and as vain as the only rooster in a henhouse. Now, you gonna do as Miranda say, or you gonna lose everything you feed your vanity with."  
  
Her hand flashed out, swift as the strike of a serpent, and the Sword of Light now rested in her hands. The Baron, utterly defeated, sank to his knees to accept his fate. "The boy can visit me all he wants. He come into his own house by the front door, and he call you Daddy from no on, none of this Baron mumbo jumbo." Miranda paused, idly tapping the sword hilt against her palm. "You gonna do the best your rotten self can do to be good to that boy, and you lay one finger on him in anger and I come back for your hide."  
  
She used the hilt to push his chin up so that their eyes locked. "This sword was made by evil and it bring out the worst in who uses it. If you smart, you give it to the boy, who got no evil in him. It make him more stupid, but not greedy and nasty and violent like you." His eyes flickered with hostility, even from his position of submission. "But, the boy come by his brains honestly, so you gonna hold on to it and pretend to be a hero. Sad."  
  
"Are you calling me stupid?" He was outraged and would have stood, except Miranda pointed the hilt at him from an inch away, and he really didn't want her to call forth the light in that situation.  
  
"Did I say you could talk? I ain't done yet." She poked him in the ribs with the hilt and continued. "You gonna train the boy to be a master with the sword. You do all I say, you keep the money and this big fancy house. You don't and I destroy you and raise the boy myself."  
  
She dropped the hilt and it clattered on the floor in front of the Baron's knees. Without another word, she walked out of the magnificent house.  
  
Ten years passed, and a much taller Gourry now sat in Miranda's shop, munching his way through a barrel of apples. The elderly Mister Kibbles stretched leisurely on his lap, batting at his hands if he faltered in his important cat petting duties. Miranda was scolding a customer and Gourry deliberately averted his attention to respect their privacy. Miranda's scoldings were fearsome and widely known, but usually needed. Gourry had suspected for years that she had scolded his father into letting him visit, but when he brought it up, she told him to hush and be respectful of his elders.  
  
The customer was finally dismissed from Miranda's presence and fled. Miranda turned in her chair and opened her arms. "What, you got no hug for old Miranda? Come here, boy."  
  
Gourry hugged the fat woman tight, lifting her out of her chair and giving a spin. "Guess what, Miranda? I met a girl! Her name is Sylphiel and she's a good cook. Dad says I should court her, since it would be a good match."  
  
Miranda smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Let's take a look at your future, boy. I want to see this girl." She had always been careful not to look to deeply into the boy's future, not wanting to tempt herself to change too much. Marriage, however, was definitely not something she could let slip without checking into it.  
  
Gourry sat in the chair reserved for customers and looked up expectantly. He'd watched this often enough to know what was going to happen, and events always proved that Miranda never lied.  
  
Miranda settled into her chair, pulling her scarves back into place as she pulled her mind and will into the tranquil state that allowed her to see into the future. She took his hand and stared into the palm. Since the power was internal, she could see the future in anything, but it helped to have a focus, and it seemed to make her customers feel better. Her eyes closed and she hummed slightly, slipping deeper into the meditative state. What she saw made her eyebrows shoot up in surprise, something Gourry had never seen happen before.  
  
"I'm sorry, boy. If you marry Sylphiel, you be content for a year or two, but then you get bored and she get unhappy. Wouldn't last long, anyway." Miranda thought for a moment on the best way to convey the rest of her vision. "You got something else to do, something important for the whole world. Your soulmate needs your help to do what she needs to do."  
  
Gourry scratched his head. "My soul mate? What's that?"  
  
"The one person in all the world created to be with you, to be the other half of your soul." Miranda saw this was going over his head. "The girl you're going to love forever."  
  
"Oh, I see." Gourry blinked a few times. "Does everybody have one?"  
  
"Yes, but most people too stupid to recognize who it is, so they marry someone pretty or a good cook instead." Miranda shrugged. "A lot of what I do is make things like that right before they go wrong."  
  
"So who is my soul mate? Is she beautiful, a luscious babe who will cook great meals for me?" Gourry was staring into his own palm eagerly, as if the lines would rearrange themselves into a picture of his perfect woman.  
  
Miranda cackled. "She will be all you dream of, although you'll fight it at first. She'll set fire to you and you'll swear to spend the rest of your life with her."  
  
Gourry stared at his palm, then at Miranda. "How will I meet her?"  
  
She closed his hand into a fist and held it between both of her, her eyes meeting his as her face settled into a grave expression. "There something else you need to know. Tomorrow there's going be a fight over who gets that sword your father love so much."  
  
"The Sword of Light? But everybody in the family fights about it all the time. Dad won't let anyone use it for long, though." Gourry had spent some time training with it, but he preferred to use a regular blade, if for nothing else but to keep peace and let someone else use the precious heirloom sword.  
  
"Child, if this fight tomorrow happens, people will die, including your father. They all want the sword enough to kill for it. They kill you if they find you alone with it."  
  
Gourry bit his lip. He didn't want to believe his family would do something like that, but he had never known Miranda to lie. "Are you sure?"  
  
Miranda nodded, looking at him sympathetically. "There no doubt in my mind, child. I'm sorry."  
  
Gourry's face firmed with resolve. "I'll just take it away, then. No one can get killed over it if it's not here."  
  
Miranda brought his hand up to her face. "Gonna be long while before I see my boy again." A tear rolled down her cheek and Gourry threw himself into her arms, kneeling on the floor as they held each other and rocked back and forth. Finally, she reached up and wiped her tears away. "You got lots to do, boy. Gonna do important things, good for the whole world. But you gotta remember always that Miranda loves you."  
  
Gourry looked at the woman who had been the closest thing to a mother he had ever known and his own eyes misted as he gave her another hug. "I love you, too, Miranda. I'll come back to visit as soon as I can."  
  
Miranda smiled and gave him a tap on the shoulder that would have felled a lesser man. "You go now, start finding your way in the world. Old Miranda be here when you come back."  
  
That night, Gourry took the Sword of Light from his father's room and left his home. He traveled far away until he stopped at the shore town of Kulsida and a fisherman talked him out of throwing the Sword of Light away. That, however, is another story.  
  
  
  
Author's Note: Stara Maijka again gets major props for beta reading. One of these days she'll get tired of me, but for now I take shameless advantage of her. If you noted a certain antebellum feel to this corner of the Elmekia Empire, blame it all on living right up near Savannah and try to forgive me. Miranda and the Baron are my first attempts at original characters, so even if they are straight from Central Casting, at least I'm heading in the general direction of originality. The idea that the Sword of Light enhancing the worst qualities of the wielder was born from watching Gourry get dumber as the series went on, coincidentally also as he used the SoL more and more. Hey, the weapon was created by Dark Star, major evil bad guy dude. Just because it has "light" in its name doesn't mean it's good. The story of Gourry and the fisherman can be found here: http://isweb13.infoseek.co.jp/play/qpdiana/spinoff4.html and all hail QP/Diana for translating it for the rest of us unworthy souls. In terms of other Gourry canon, I'm not sure when and how he met Sylphiel, so I'm going with a version that's convenient for my story. If it's wrong, I'm sorry. 


End file.
